In just a few short weeks, I'll be attending the International Food Bloggers Conference and I'm quite excited. I'm attending for both professional/work reasons and personal reasons. I love it when one's job collides with one's passion!

Oh My, there's been a bit of a blog drought around here. But I have a good excuse. My laptop, sweet little Toby is on the brink of death.

He's fading fast as you can see from the picture above. The problem, the real problem is that my new Dell laptop which was ordered on April 3rd is still not here. They claim that it will be delivered by May 1 but that is an awfully long time away.

I've been keeping myself busy since computing at home is limited by working on my quilt and knitting projects.

The quilt has been sandwhiched and is ready for quilting.

I've made pickles and if I liked sweet pickles, they'd be awesome!

And I've been knitting like mad!

In the end though, I miss having a working computer at home! Hurry up little Dell, hurry up!

A few weeks ago, I went down to Tacoma with a few friends. We stopped in a fun fabric shop which *gasp* was having a bit of a sale. I stocked up on some fabric for another quilt. Now I still need to finish my Stacked Coins quilt but that will come in due time, in due time. Until then, let the collecting continue!

I found this shawl to be a very quick knit and a very beautiful one at that. I used just short of one skein of Socks that Rock Medium-weight in Kaw-Kaw. I bought this skein at Madrona Fibers Arts and was disappointed that they only had one skein available. In the end though, it completely worked out!

I knit the small size for the stockinette and then switched to the large size of the pattern for the lace portion.

The lace directions were easy to follow and I have to admit that I might be more comfortable with written directions over charts.

More details on the pattern and yarn can be found on Ravelry. Additional photos can be found on Flickr.